The Courageous Political Performances of '08

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again ... who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly."

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What would Theodore Roosevelt--the author of the quotation above, which is the inspiration for this column--have made of Barack Obama? I'm not sure he would have liked him very much. T.R. was more a McCain sort of guy: blustery and passionate, valuing emotion over precision. But our President-elect certainly merits this year's lead Teddy Award, distributed to mark honorable behavior in the political arena. He deserves it for displaying a trait memorialized by Roosevelt's contemporary and fellow imperialist Rudyard Kipling: "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs .../ you'll be a Man, my son!" (See TIME's Person of the Year, People Who Mattered, and more.)

A man, indeed. Obama's greatest achievement was that he managed to win the presidency while respecting the intelligence of the American people. Oh, he pandered some and at times nudged up against the line of acceptable political behavior: he did claim, falsely, that McCain was responsible for the loss of 8,000 jobs in Ohio. But he was solid on all the big stuff. He refused to take tawdry short cuts, like supporting a "gas-tax holiday" during the primaries against Hillary Clinton. He has, since the election, remained true to the promises and philosophy he proposed during the campaign. Most important, he restrained himself--despite great temptations, despite exhortations from the press--to get into the gutter with his opponent. He kept his cool, which was the strategy, of course, but it was also his natural inclination. He offered a dignified, honorable campaign to a nation that badly needed one.

And what of his opponent? John McCain is a charter Teddy Award winner, a former exemplar of free-range political candor. Not this year. He ran a dismal campaign that seems even smaller in retrospect. He spent almost all his energy trying to besmirch his opponent without offering a memorable new idea. Still, he deserves credit for two steps he didn't take: he did not play the race card by regurgitating the hateful sermons of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor; and he did not play the anti-immigrant card that might have appealed to frightened average Joes and assorted plumbers throughout the Rust Belt and the Midwest. McCain has sullied his reputation, though, which is a pity. (A parenthetical and auxiliary Teddy should go to Tina Fey, not for courage so much as truth through hilarity: she nailed the absurdity of McCain's vice-presidential pick--the worst political decision of the year.)

No Teddy for our departing President George W. Bush, either. His last year in office was among his worst--clueless in crisis. Several of his appointees did perform honorably under difficult circumstances, however. One was Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who will continue to serve in the new Administration. Gates was a constant voice of sanity when it came to the sorts of weapons, tactics and troop levels that will be needed to fight the wars Bush left behind. There is no telling what sort of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might have been in another Administration, but she deserves a going-away Teddy for standing up to Vice President Dick Cheney, especially when she defended her excellent North Korea negotiator, Christopher Hill. Finally, General David Petraeus deserves a Teddy for his leadership in Iraq, a war that seemed hopeless a year ago, and for his role in the transformation of the U.S. Army. Let's hope that his intelligence and boundless optimism help the new Administration find a path to peace in Afghanistan.

The highlight of my year was visiting Walter Reed Army Hospital with my beloved New York Mets last summer. I'll never forget two of the younger players, Daniel Murphy and Nick Evans, sitting patiently with an equally young double amputee who talked a blue streak but couldn't remember where he was serving when he was wounded. We also met several of the extraordinary soldiers who were badly wounded while holding their Afghan firebase against an overwhelming Taliban assault last July. The Mets crashed, yet again, at the end of the season, but they earn a Teddy for remembering the troops. "It's nothing compared to what they did," the pitcher Pedro Martinez said afterward. Yes, but it deserves recognition--as do the daily sacrifices of those deployed in the real arenas, Afghanistan and Iraq. What a privilege to live in the country they serve.

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